Word: nigerias
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Though other crises in other trouble spots have diverted attention from the war between Nigeria and its breakaway eastern region, that plight remains desperate. In England a conference of the World Council of Churches voted to collect $5 million from member churches to aid the people of warring Biafra and Nigeria. The churchmen also called on Nigerian leaders to end an air blockade that has kept many of Biafra's 7,000,000 people on diets that are hovering barely above the starvation level...
With conditions worsening, Biafra's Chief of State, General Odumegwu Ojukwu, last week sought to break a deadlock with Nigeria over the Red Cross flights. The Nigerians, who shot down the Red Cross plane in retaliation for raids on their territory by Biafran light planes flown by Swedish pilots, have agreed to resumption of the flights -but only if Biafra agrees to meet two stiff conditions. Food planes must fly during daylight to distinguish them from gunrunners who often head at night for Uli, Biafra's principal airstrip, and have proved difficult to distinguish from mercy flights. They...
Biafra, which had previously rejected both conditions, finally agreed to the daylight flights but remained adamant against landings in Nigeria. "What's to prevent them," asked a Biafran official, "from seizing a Red Cross plane, loading it with fifty commandos and forcing the crew to take them to Uli to destroy it?" The Biafrans also fear that newsmen and other Western observers will be removed from such planes, thereby depriving Biafra of badly needed foreign publicity...
Pressure on Oil. Under such circumstances, the talks on resuming the flights remained stalemated-as does virtually everything else about the two-year-old war. Neither army is able to mount a consistent offensive. Pope Paul, during his African visit, was unable to bring Ojukwu and Nigeria's leader, General Yakubu Gowon, to a bargaining table. Neither were Harold Wilson, Charles de Gaulle or Haile Selassie, who heads the Organization of African Unity, which meets next month in Addis Ababa to discuss...
EMMANUEL AJIBADE Lagos, Nigeria...